Eos & BBC Now On The Rights Track

The BBC has reached an agreement with Eos, the collecting society for Welsh-language songwriters and publishers, signing a new licensing deal and ending a lengthy dispute.

Essentially, when PRS made changes to the way that royalties were distributed to artists, creators and publishers of welsh language songs were left with lower royalty rates. Following a dispute, over 300 songwriters withdrew from PRS and formed Eos– meaning that a new deal with boradcasters needed to be negotiated.

Eos pulled its entire catalogue from BBC Cymru at the start of 2013 following disagreements over royalty amounts and the case went to copyright tribunal. This resulted in a ruling that the BBC should pay the £100,000, the amount the corporation has claimed was due, as opposed to the reported £1.5m that Eos were pushing for.

A spokesman for the BBC provided this hugely illuminating quote, presumably through gritted teeth: “We welcome the fact that we have come to an agreement with Eos and we look forward to working with them”